Month: July 2022

The Italian government declared a state of emergency in five northern regions because of a dangerous heatwave and drought — that are taking a toll on agriculture and threatening power supplies, according to Reuters. 

The emergency was declared on Monday and will remain in effect until the end of the year and give local authorities the tools to take immediate action, such as imposing water rationing on homes and businesses.

So far, 36.5 million euros ($38.1 million) have been earmarked for northern regions, such as Emilia-Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Lombardy, Piedmont, and Veneto, to tackle the water shortage.

“The state of emergency is aimed at managing the current situation with extraordinary means and powers, with relief and assistance to the affected population,” the government said.

Bloomberg’s two-week max temperature forecasts show the heatwave could worsen. 

High temperatures and arid conditions have brought the water levels of Po, Italy’s longest river, which runs for more than 650 km (400 miles) through the northern region, to lows not seen in seven decades. Po provides critical water supplies to vast amounts of farmland — the drought threatens about 30% of Italy’s agricultural produce and could lead to seasonal harvest declines for barley, grain, and rice. 

Italy’s worst drought in 70 years has the salt water from the Adriatic Sea flowing back into the Po, the country’s longest river, making irrigation almost impossible and causing further damage to crops hit by an early summer heatwave https://t.co/VIUKM4NNO7 pic.twitter.com/G8AUJbB4yG

— Reuters (@Reuters) June 30, 2022

The extreme conditions have led to a 50% decline in hydroelectric power, which feeds about 15% of the country’s power needs. Less hydroelectric power will strain the grid and put more pressure on fossil fuel power generation amid an ongoing energy crisis.

Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,

This week, tens of thousands of farmers have gathered from all across the Netherlands to protest government policies which will reduce the number of livestock in the country by up to a third.

In a typical example of media weasel-wording, the press reports on this all headline something like “Dutch farmers protest emissions targets”, but this is a massive lie by omission.

The government policy being protested is a 25 BILLION Euro investment in “reducing levels of nitrogen pollution” true, but it plans to achieve this by (among other things) “paying some Dutch livestock farmers to relocate or exit the industry”.

In real terms, this ultimately means reducing the number of pigs, chickens and cows by about thirty per cent.

That’s what is being protested here – a deliberately shrinking of the farming sector, impacting the livelihood of thousands of farmers, and the food supply of literally hundreds of millions of people.

THE BIG PICTURE

While the scheme is allegedly about limiting nitrogen and ammonia emissions from urine and manure it’s hard not to see this in the broader context of the ongoing created food crisis.

The Netherlands produces a massive food surplus and is one of the largest exporters of meat in the world and THE largest in Europe. Reducing its output by a third could have huge implications for the global food supply, especially in Western Europe.

Perhaps more troubling is how this could act as a precedent.

This isn’t the first “pay farmers not to farm” scheme launched in the last year – both the UK and US have put such schemes in place – but a government paying to reduce it’s own meat production? That is a first.

That it is (allegedly) being done to “protect the environment” makes it a big warning sign for the future. Denmark, Belgium and Germany are already considering similar policies.

The Western world seems to be enthusiastically embracing quasi-suicidal policies.

I mean, paying farmers to reduce the amount of food they produce…while (notionally) threatened with war…in the midst of a recession…facing record inflation as the cost of living spirals.

Does that really make any sense?

That’s almost as crazy as refusing new oil and gas leases while the cost of petrol is going up.

Indeed, in a world beset by a shortage of fertiliser due to sanctions against Russia and Belarus, it would seem almost mad to complain about a manure surplus, let alone try to reduce it.

We’re well past the point where any of this could be considered accidental, aren’t we?

Put it this way – if the collective governments of the Western world were trying to impoverish and starve their own citizens, what exactly would they be doing differently?

Russian gas producer Gazprom PJSC proposed to expand the rubles-for-gas scheme to liquified natural gas (LNG), the Interfax news agency quoted Kirill Polous, head of Gazprom’s long-term development department.

Polous, who spoke at a State Duma Energy Committee round table at which Russia’s Energy Strategy for the next three decades was discussed, proposed that customers pay rubles for its LNG exports. 

“Pipeline gas is sold to European counter-parties from unfriendly states for rubles, but such measures don’t apply to LNG,” he told the State Duma Energy Committee. “Thus, there is already some kind of currency competition between Russian pipeline gas and LNG supplies.”

President Putin has declared that all “unfriendly” countries buying Russian natural gas fulfill their payments in roubles. This has been a significant problem for the European Union, which gets an estimated 40% of its NatGas from Russia. 

Russia already runs the ruble-for-gas payment system for the natural gas it sends to Europe via pipeline. Gazprom has already stopped supplying gas to countries and companies refusing to bow to the rubles demand—Poland, Bulgaria, Finland, as well as customers in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany.

Many European companies have set up accounts in rubles at Gazprombank to comply with Putin’s demand. Nevertheless, Gazprom slashed pipeline supply to Germany and Italy in the middle of June, claiming “technical reasons” and saying Western sanctions prevent a gas turbine being repaired in Canada from returning to Russia in time. Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi dismissed this explanation, describing the Russian reasons for the reduced flows as “lies.”

With low supply from Russia and Nord Stream up for a two-week maintenance this month, Europe scrambles to fill gas storage in time for the winter. –OilPrice.com 

The move has made the rouble the world’s best-performing currency this year, despite Western sanctions aimed at crippling Moscow. 

Polous’ proposal comes as Russia seized operations of the Sakhalin-2 LNG plant last week. Putin has signed an order to create a new firm to take over Sakhalin Energy Investment Co.

Russia accounts for 8% of the global LNG supply, with the bulk of it consumed in Asia. In Europe, Spain is one of the largest buyers of Russian LNG.

Moscow could easily extend the rouble scheme to other exports, including oil, grain, fertilizers, coal, metals, and other key commodities, boosting the currency’s value and bringing in more cash. A larger amount of roubles demanded in international markets to purchase Russian commodities is Moscow’s way of challenging US dollar dominance in global trade. 

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

Over the weekend I was asked by Sputnik News to comment on why President Biden was so set on supporting Ukraine against Russia with money and weapons despite abysmal approval ratings and a fiscal budget hole that widens daily.

Here’s a link to the article Sputnik published. They give me pretty much the second half of the article.

Meanwhile, American geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo remarked that the ongoing conflict in the eastern European nation is nothing more than a “war between civilizations,” in US neoconservatives’ efforts to “forestall Russia taking control of Ukraine.”

Touching on Washington officials’ motives behind the ever-increasing aid to Kiev, Luongo told Sputnik that the American president, “as a proxy for the oligarchs in Davos, is acting on their behalf to ultimately weaken the US by sending weapons overseas and destroying US leadership and credibility.”

The short answer is what I’ve been saying for nearly three years now, The Davos Crowd wants the US destroyed and it is working from within and without our government to achieve that goal. Biden’s staunch support of Ukraine fits that thesis perfectly.

As I wrote about in my last article, depleting US and Western weapons stockpiles while exposing to the world the vulnerability of manufacturing is a key data point for the Global South to stand up publicly and defy Biden and Davos on any further attempts to isolate Russia.

I have to think, at a certain level, Biden is so out of touch with reality that he actually believes the sanctions are working and that Putin’s regime is going to collapse any time now. He’s as likely in the dark about the reality of the real situation as UAF army regulars fighting in the Donbass were about the real war, rather than the propaganda they were being fed.

Between now and the midterms you can expect further acceleration of the Davos agenda in D.C. Spending billions supporting Ukraine is yet another way to try to push the Fed into not raising rates any farther.

It’s a pathetic billion here, billion there. So, it’s truly irrelevant, but it shows the utter desperation of their position. If anything, these latest announced tranches of support are simply a mix of good ol’ fashioned payola to keep certain people quiet and a last grab at the till before it all gets shut down.

I know there are storm clouds of war on the horizon, and it’s clear that many within NATO are simply trying to draw out the fighting in Eastern Ukraine until such time that the West can counterstrike against Russia and drive her back.

Personally, I can’t see that strategy having any real support outside of the room where George Soros rails in his narcissistic dementia, but hey, that’s just me talking.

As always, thanks to Olga at Sputnik for her questions and here is the full text of what I sent to them.

This is yet more US funding for Ukraine. What are the motives behind continuously fueling Ukraine with money and military assistance?

It is a deep-seated need by neoconservatives to forestall Russia taking control of Ukraine. This conflict is a war between civilizations. Biden, as a proxy for the oligarchs in Davos, is acting on their behalf to ultimately weaken the U.S. by sending weapons overseas and destroying U.S. leadership and credibility.

This will only end when there is a real political revolution in the U.S.

This comes amid an economic crisis, Biden’s plummeting approval ratings and other hot issues in the US. Why is the Biden administration so focused on the conflict overseas instead of fixing problems at home?

He was put in charge to destroy the U.S. Biden and his administration are vandals. They are not acting in the U.S.’s best interests but have subordinated our public policy to the wishes of foreign powers. Too many conservatives want to align the DNC with China, but it’s clear that while China is helping erode the political cohesiveness of the U.S. it is Davos and their Climate Change/technocracy agenda that is pulling all the strings.

Why is the US not spending this money subsidizing the energy sector, for example, to maintain the country’s energy security and protect its citizens?

This question answers itself. The U.S. is being run by traitors. I wish it was more complicated than that. But it isn’t.

How long can the US economy afford to sponsor Washington’s ambitions?

Not much longer. This is why, at this late date, in my opinion, there is sincere and seriously organized pushback coming from the most unlikely place, some of the U.S. megabanks and the Federal Reserve, who is aggressively tightening monetary policy to drain the world of dollars and break both the offshore (Euro)dollar markets and put China’s financial partners, namely Hong Kong, under sincere pressure.

If the Fed doesn’t do this now, the odds of a political disintegration of the U.S. by the end of the decade rise dramatically.

Where does this massive funding package come from? Where does the US get the money for this huge amount?

For this year, from money already allocated, but ultimately Congress has to sell debt into the market which either has to be bought domestically, internationally or monetized by the Fed.

The Fed is raising rates to stop the money spigot in D.C. by forcing Congress to act more responsibly. Think of these spending allocations and pledges, like the $600 billion for global infrastructure to thwart China’s Belt and Road Initiative as attempts at blackmailing a reluctant Fed to monetize debt the world no longer wants to buy.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta warned that the US GDP might decrease 1% in second quarter of 2022. This could mean the start of a recession. How high are the chances of a large-scale economic collapse in the wake of this?

There is a large gulf between a recession and ‘large-scale economic collapse.’ The Fed can and should do what its doing to force resolutions on many outstanding geopolitical issues and imbalances. If it’s going to ‘act globally’ this is how is should do so, by taking away the punchbowl of offshore USD-based credit, Eurodollars, and regain control over its own monetary policy.

If that process causes a severe contraction and economic dislocation in the U.S. economy for a year or two that is the price one must pay to balance the books from the previous inflationary boom. I think the worst of those effects on the US economy will be blunted by the complete collapse of the European economy and sovereign debt markets, however. It won’t last forever, two maybe three years, but it will be enough time to effect real political change. We’ll know at this year’s mid-term elections what the American people really think about these things.